Brief Description: Completed Top & Bottom Spar Cap Angles
Every builder has this kind of day. The day where everything that can go wrong does. The only redeeming factor was that I persisted and ended up with high-quality parts. But at no turn was it easy. Warning: what follows is detailed information about my day (mainly for me to avoid the same mistakes again). I did discover one very good process, which I will document on a separate entry called "Full length bending brake" which might be of interest to other builders. As I noted in my last entry, I discovered that I had cut my blanks with the splice break right on top of a rivet, requiring me to shorten the longer piece by 20mm and to make new short pieces that were 20mm longer. I started this morning by shortening a long section of bottom spar cap angle and attempting to bend it to 102 degrees open. Attempted is the operative term. Because of the length with bolt tightening on the ends but nothing available in the middle, my bend radius was sloppy and the part was a mess. After stepping back and thinking about it, I concluded that the web that goes into the brake could in fact be the side which is trimmed to 20mm. Since the tightening bolts are over 30mm from the radius, I decided to put the aluminum in place and drill through the brake holes so bolts could be put all the way along the piece. Voila...a perfect bend. Then it hit me that there was nothing to stop me from using the entire length of the brake using this technique. This would allow me to make all my spar cap angles in one long piece. I pulled out my 12' .032 aluminum and cut four new 100mm strips and carefully bent each one to specifications. They looked great. Right before lunch I decided that I wanted to complete the trimming of a top spar cap angle, so I hurriedly marked and cut the part. You probably know where I'm headed. I cut both sides as 20mm flanges, when in fact one side is 20mm and the other is 30mm. I was so mad at myself for not taking my time. Text length is limited, so more on the next entry.
